At Marcopoloni we are 100 percent committed to offering authentic products. We started the business with that goal and over the last ten years we have seen countless companies say that they offer Made in Italy, experienced, artisanal quality while, in reality, they were cutting corners every step of the way. Some hide behind the requirement that at least 60 percent of the value of the product needs to be Italian to be allowed to put made in Italy on the label; some use inexperienced immigrant labor; some use cheaper leather; some use industrial processes; and many use a combination of all of the above.

While we respect the ability of such businesses to make money, we feel that cutting corners results in a different product and a different experience for the customer. If you think that Parmesan cheese made in Wisconsin is the same as Parmigiano Reggiano made in Parma or Reggio Emilia, please move on elsewhere because you will not find any cheap imitations here.

While at dinner, Alessandro Quadri (one of the owners at Maledetti Toscani) and I decided that it is time for us to go beyond just talking about the difference, we need to show the difference. During the next two days I hope to document as much of it as possible.

My Nicola and I arrived safely in Italy. I have worn it everyday and quickly realized that I had room to spare. So, on occasion, I carried a small cell phone in the inner pocket along with my Moneta coin compartment wallet, and my still useful Galaxy SII in the outer pocket outside the Note 3.

Traveling with two small children is not very easy as demand for your hands is at its peak. Having a reliable pouch that stores your phone and wallet seems indispensable. It feels that I am constantly reaching for my phone, whether it is to capture a memory or to find my way around.

I even got two unexpected compliments for it by people who knew their pouches. The best comment was: “better than Prada” while the most insightful was to be careful not to scratch the car as you get in and out. I have said it before that the Nicola does not seem to get in the way. I am sure that I will bang it into something eventually but that doesn’t seem to be my problem yet.
So far the Nicola studded belt pouch is the perfect companion on our exploratory part of our trip. No one has ever tried to pick-pocket from it so far even though Emi caught me with one (and sometimes both) button open. Next, we are going to visit our artisans.

The vitendino: I might get carried away with it. Most of the time I can live without it, but, when I start thinking that I should hang my bag somewhere when I come home instead of hanging it on my dining chair, I get visions of having multiple Vitendini decorating the entrance walls. If I let myself daydream long enough I will be thinking about the streams of Vitendini in every room including the garage.

The reality is that i don’t even know the capacity of the Vitendino. So I don’t know if it is fit to hold the weight of a bag full with my laptop and a few random essentials: it can be pretty heavy. I will find out on July 14 when we visit Antartidee, or, if I forget to ask, the plan is to find out by trial and error.

Strangely, it is the lack of this knowledge that has kept me from trying it. It’s a catch-22 that has paralyzed me for over a year. Luckily, I recently made a breakthrough: I talked to Emi and she said that it would be great if we had a few of them on our wall by the doorway.

So at least now I have a license to try it at home and see how well it performs. I can’t wait to get back from Italy and try it so that I can report my findings and finally have a solution to my bag-hanging problem.

I was happy with my Daniele. But since I got the Note 3 I had to get something the right size. The Nicola seems designed for it.

We are going to Italy next week and my two-and-a-half-year-old phone started to conveniently act up. So I had to get a new phone and, since Emi had such a good experience with her Note 3, I decided to go with the same because I wanted to be able to blog while on the road. So now that I have it I thought that blogging about my new belt pouch would be an ideal place to start.

At first I thought that no belt pouches would fit the huge Note 3. But Emi was quick to point out that the Nicola Campomaggi Leather Belt Pouch should fit it. Knowing that I could have had easy access to my note three by using a Campomaggi leather belt pouch is what actually convinced me to make the Note 3 purchase. My combination of Daniele and Samsung S2 had been so successful that I was really not ready to abandon it.

Once the decision to pick the Nicola was finalized I had to choose a color. I chose the Distressed Espresso because I didn’t have bags from Campomaggi in that color yet while I do have nice belts in Espresso. Distressed olive-brown is my favorite color but distressed espresso is a close second or third, and it turned out that we had a lighter espresso in stock that really showed a lot of gradient which, in my opinion, really accentuates the quality of Campomaggi leather. The one that I picked has some red tones in it. It is a beautiful specimen.

I have been wearing it all day today and I have to say that it is really comfortable. So far it never got in my way and the buttons, which I thought would be hard to operate and close, are really secure and they are easy to open and close. Other than that, I need more experience with it to be able to talk about it. So I am going to leave for Italy and try to see if I can blog from there next week.

The espresso-color BELLI bag looks beautiful with a casual or dressier outfit.

A long time ago, I worked for Neiman Marcus in San Francisco. I sold Kiehl’s skincare products in the cosmetics department. Directly across from cosmetics was the handbag section, where every day I gazed upon the elegant and very expensive Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton and Kate Spade handbags.

Twice a year we had an extra employee discount day called 30/30. You got your usual 30 percent off, then an additional 30 percent off that. I kept telling myself I would eventually buy a Gucci bag on 30/30. But I never did. For a long time I regretted that.

Here at Marcopoloni.com, employees accrue “MP Bucks.” Eventually we can use those MP bucks to make a purchase.

I’ve got my eye on this gorgeous BELLI bag by Campomaggi. I love the woven pattern, the vintage look, the beautiful stitching on the sides, and most of all the buttery softness of this full-grain Italian leather as it sits on my shoulder. It just feels right.

I don’t need to regret passing up a Gucci bag so long ago. Campomaggi bags are even better than those designer purses with immediately-recognizable logos and patterns. When you buy a Campomaggi you are buying something made by hand at an artisan’s workshop in Italy, colored with environmentally friendly vegetable-based dyes. Not something that comes off a factory assembly line. And your bag will look like nobody else’s.

So for now I will wait. And hope this bag is still here in stock when I am ready to cash in my MP Bucks!

Was I excited about receiving our first shipment of shoes on Thursday? You bet, especially since I was going to make at least one pair mine. I was also really hoping not to become disappointed as my expectations were getting to be extremely high.

That definitely did not happen this time. Although my TOSTA silver sneakers did not quite look like the shoes I had seen in the pictures provided by Maledetti Toscani, their quality simply blew me away.

The first time I wore them they felt pretty tight and I noticed that the strings would lose some of the silver when I tightened them. They also felt stiff here and there. Luckily, my worry that they wouldn’t break in soon dissipated though. After a few days they loosened up a lot and they only felt stiff against my toes when I bent them as much as possible. I will confirm that this has gone away in a future post, for now let me tell you what my first impression has been.

The shoes go great with the dark blue jeans and with the distressed gray jeans I have. I actually bought the gray ones hoping that they would pair well with the sneakers. I couldn’t be more pleased. Not only do they look great, they also feel great. When I am not wearing them my feet long for the next time I will put them on. There is a love affair going on, one that I expect to last a very long time.

I have been waiting for these sneakers for months but tomorrow they should finally be here!

There are very few things that can make me mad: Italian customs is one of them. It is an institution that cannot be explained in terms of logic and that often drives Italian entrepreneurs to leave the country. When a few years ago they intercepted a bag that I was trying to return to Dionigi and wouldn’t let it go unless I paid Italian duties three months later, I felt that I was dealing with what is to be expected. I was mad, don’t get me wrong, but I wasn’t surprised.

This time they sequestered our shipment of shoes going out of Italy and made sure that it was returned to sender. To this day we do not know the reason. The only thing that was missing with the shipment was the English translation of the commercial invoice for US Customs, which was promptly provided and which had been accepted by US Customs who cleared the shipment. Yet, somehow, the shipment could not leave and had to be returned to sender. No explanation was provided and no effort was made to help us solve the problem.

Our decision to expand our offering to shoes was influenced by how quickly we fell in love with Maledetti Toscani shoes. We are extremely excited about receiving them and the delay has been so painful, especially for me: I have picked out a pair of sneakers that I can see on my feet every day as I go to work. Now the second shipment also sat in Italian customs for four days and I had to have Maledetti Toscani contact Fedex and customs to get it moving (again, apparently everything was in order). Finally, tonight, the tracking log shows that the shipment has reached Memphis! What a relief!!! Tomorrow might be the day… I might get to walk home on a new pair of shoes!

I really hope that these shoes are worth the effort. What if I am disappointed? I cannot even consider that possibility right now. I wish I could be a fly on the wall in Memphis.

I’m thrilled to join Marcopoloni as the newest member of the team. Coming to the office every day means I have the chance to appreciate beautiful handmade artisan treasures, from rustic leather Campomaggi bags to delicate Murano glass figurines. But what really stands out at Marcopoloni is the care and attention that goes into the process of bringing these artisan-crafted goods to you, the customer.

It may seem crazy to take a half hour to photograph each of the four slightly different Salvi leather briefcases we have in stock – because there are variations in color and texture in vegetable-tanned, full grain leather – then upload and e-mail those pictures so a customer can choose the exact bag he wants to order.

It happens a lot around here, though, and it’s one of the reasons Marcopoloni is known for great customer service.

I think of Marcopoloni as a “mom and pop” shop of the Internet, run by a husband-and-wife team with a real passion for handmade artisan products. Since we’re not a bricks-and-mortar store (although there is a small showroom in the office that fills the place with the elegant scent of Italian leather) we can’t greet you by name when you walk in the door. Instead we get to know you by answering your questions via phone and e-mail, and always following up to make sure you are completely happy with your purchase.

I share in your appreciation of handmade art. I grew up in Cambria, Calif., surrounded by creative people including my parents who made stained glass, batik art and ceramics. My husband is a woodworker who makes custom skateboards in our garage woodshop. Our home is filled with art made by family and friends.

While Daniele and Emi are in Italy this summer visiting local artisans and hand-picking new creations for Marcopoloni, I will be here in the office making sure things run smoothly. I look forward to hearing from you!

If you are a long-time fan of Campomaggi bags, or simply bought enough of them, you know very well that each Campomaggi bag is unique in more ways than one. This is particularly true for the distressed leather bags which absorb the dye differently, shrink differently, and sometimes even stretches differently. This, on top of the use of full grain Italian vacchetta leather, which in and of itself shows its character differently every time, ensures that each bag is very different from the next.

We realized this right away and immediately offered to our customers pictures of what was available. Last year we made the decision that Campomaggi bags should be sold as one-of-a-kind and that customers should be able to see exactly what they will be getting before they buy.

This immediately created a ton of work for us at a time when, with the birth of our son Marco, our productive time has shrunk. Yet, we think that this is the right way to do it and you will notice that more and more bags will show you exactly what is available. We often do this in response to a customer request. For example, yesterday someone wanted to buy the VALLA in Distressed Olive Brown. We had four in stock and they were all pretty different. Perfect! We took pictures of the front and back and posted them on our web site. Our customer chose hers and now there are three left for other people to pick.

We received our Caterina Lucchi picks for the 2014 summer and they are even more delightful than we ever imagined. We had seen them a few months back, but actually holding them and admiring the colors that we chose is a wonderful feeling.

The first bags that we added to the web site are the PETALINI, the ONDA, and the new version of the BALLETTO, the BALLETTO BIS in buffalo leather.

With these three bags along with the rest of the Caterina Lucchi and Campomaggi collections our showroom is in full bloom. Just like in a garden, some flowers will last longer than others while some will leave for their new homes rather quickly. When we get to know the customers who buy the bags we feel like we are still in touch (it’s like a kid off to college), so please do not hesitate to ask questions, you are really just helping us know where our beloved bags will go.